Page 14 of The Billionaire's Bad News Baby

“Being good at something and enjoying something aren’t necessarily related.”

“That’s fair.”

“It’s draining,” she said, making it sound like an admission of guilt. “Going to work knowing that you’re about to make someone’s day a whole lot worse. And they’re never afraid to tell you that, you know, how you’ve ruined everything, even if I am just giving them the paperwork.”

Elio thought back on how he’d reacted to her at the door, marching her down the dock and wanting her off the property. All for just handing him the paperwork, like she said. No wonder she wasn’t fazed by anything. If she was, she would have crumbled in a second. Now she was here having dinner with him. She either had the courage of a lioness or she was really, really stupid. But the second option seemed less and less likely the more time he spent talking with her.

“Thanks, by the way,” she said, snapping Elio out of his reverie.

“For what?”

“For not throwing me into the ocean.”

“I wasn’t actually going to.”

Kayla shrugged. “I’m used to having things thrown at me, so I wouldn’t have held it against you.”

“What? Who throws things at you?”

Kayla looked at him wide-eyed like he was a bit stupid, and maybe he was because Elio was struggling to think of a scenario where he would actually throw something at a woman on his doorstep and was coming up blank.

“People I serve papers to,” she said slowly, as if it was obvious. “They’re usually pretty mad about me being there. I’m sure you can relate.”

“What do they throw at you?”

“Whatever’s closest to the front door, so mostly it’s vases. Once, it was a full-length coat stand launched at me like a javelin, which was honestly kind of impressive.”

Elio stared at her with his mouth open, and he must have looked appropriately horrified because Kayla stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth.

“It’s not that bad,” she said, and Elio just shook his head.

“Please quit,” he said. “Go do something where people won’t throw literal pieces of furniture at you.”

“Well, I mean, you’re getting sued over an olive,” she said with a good-humored shrug. “And you’re a proper CEO, so it seems nowhere is safe.”

“True.” Elio sighed.

He ate another bite of pasta, hungrier than he’d realized. They ate in silence for a little bit, the atmosphere strange around them now that the hostility seemed to have been drained away. Now, it was just kind of awkward. Not only that, but Elio was violently curious about her. But how do you start asking someone questions in earnest when hours ago you were throwing them off your property?

“I’d give you more information if I could,” Kayla said, breaking the tension. “About the court case and stuff, but that’s not really my domain.”

“Thanks,” Elio said, surprised that she had been so… sweet. If you could call her sweet. But she seemed genuine enough. “Didn’t think you’d be on my side in the whole thing, honestly.”

“A lot of the time, it’s the defendant who’s in the right, you know,” she said, sounding philosophical. “You can’t judge if a person is actually good or not by which side of the lawsuit they fall into. Even winning a lawsuit doesn’t tell you whether they’re the good guy. You’ve got to look at a person’s whole life. For the context. And besides, people are too complicated to just shoehorn them into good or bad anyways.”

She continued eating as if she hadn’t just revealed a deeply profound worldview out of nowhere, and Elio had to take a second to reevaluate everything he thought about her. Maybe she wasn’t just all snark and no substance, not after that little speech. And maybe that was why she was happily sitting down to dinner with him after their less-than-ideal introduction, because she was waiting for more context to see if he was a good guy or not. Elio was overcome with embarrassment with how immature and reactive he’d been about all of this. Not to mention taking it all out on this woman who was now trapped here with nothing but the clothes on her back… Oh, God.

“You have a phone, right?” he asked, feeling smaller by the minute for only asking these things now. His self-preservation tunnel vision had a habit of kicking in hard. Only later, after the event was done and dusted, would he think to ask people if they were all right, if they needed help, or if they’d been upset. It hadn’t earned him a whole lot of friends over the years. Kayla didn’t seem to mind the delay, though, nodding happily as she pulled a cell phone out of her pocket like a trophy.

“Got a phone, and I managed to get through to the hotel on the mainland. They’re going to keep my luggage for me until I can get back. I might need to be a pain and borrow a charger cord, if that’s okay… I wasn’t really planning on staying.”

She grimaced at having to ask another favor of him, which was something new to Elio as well. Usually, people leapt at the chance to ask him for favors, for introductions, for discounts, for money. And here Kayla was asking if she could borrow a phone charger. He hadn’t even thought about her lack of supplies until just now, either. She’d turned up at his door with nothing but a cardboard box and the clothes on her back. And Elio had been hoping for the weather to clear quickly, but he’d seen storms like this before and that hope was fading fast.

“I can lend you some clothes,” he offered, feeling a little silly saying it but also wary of the ghost of his mother getting ready to smack him if he didn’t at least offer.

Kayla looked surprised, and Elio felt even more ridiculous as he rushed to fill the once again awkward silence.

“I mean, there’s a laundry if you need it, but I can lend you a shirt and some trousers. You’re not too much shorter than me, so I’m sure you’ll be okay if you roll the cuffs up a couple times.”

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